‘The Last Guardian’ Still in Development

After being announced back at E3 in 2009, Team Ico’sThe Last Guardian has yet to make an appearance in playable form. Cancellation fears spread after another no-show in 2011, but when we interviewed SCE Canada’s Director of Public Relations and Marketing, Matt Levitan, last year, he assuaged our fears that The Last Guardian had become vaporware. Specifically, he stated that the game was still in development and that “once people get the chance to play it, they’ll be blown away.”

Unfortunately, the title once again failed to appear in 2012. President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios for SCE, Shuhei Yoshida, apologized for the delay but indicated that the game still existed and would be re-introduced at the right time.

The right time appeared to be E3 2013 as the E3 Insider website listed The Last Guardian as one of Sony’s showcase titles. Unfortunately, this turned out to be incorrect. Worse, Sony President and CEO of SCEA, Jack Tretton, further dashed our hopes by telling GTTV that the title “was not going away but it is on hiatus right now.” While not indicative of cancellation, Tretton’s statement was not particularly encouraging either.

Fortunately, Yoshida further clarified Sony’s position on the game:

“It’s alive and kicking in terms of development. If you visit Japan Studio there are lots of people working on it. But as Ueda-San shared with people a couple of months ago, we really want to be confident next time when we introduce The Last Guardian to the public, so we are waiting for that time to come.”

While Sony’s position on The Last Guardiansounds like a broken record at this point, the news could be worse. The Last Guardian still lives, although we wouldn’t be surprised if it now releases on the newly introduced PlayStation 4. It certainly would make for a great launch exclusive on Sony’s newest console.